Distribution of Customer-Specific Settings via Flow

Organizations that use both G4 and Flow share design work across various locations. Designers need an easy way to access client-specific settings and files for G4. These settings are saved in Flow, from which G4 retrieves them automatically. Client-specific settings refer to the contents of G4's custom folder.

Upon startup, G4 loads a new custom folder if there is a document in Flow classified as cad_custom_zip. The previous custom folder is first renamed to custom_backup1, and the one before that to custom_backup2. In addition to the contents of the Flow document, the custom folder will contain a custom_readme.txt, which provides information about the Flow document and the latest changes. The custom folder is only downloaded if custom_readme.txt is missing or its date is older than the document in Flow.

Since the new custom folder is only downloaded after logging into Flow, G4 will have already loaded the previous settings. Therefore, after downloading the custom folder, a prompt will appear to restart G4 so that the latest settings can take effect.

Creating a Custom Zip

You can create the zip for the Flow document in two ways:

In File Explorer, for the custom folder: Send to -> Compressed (zipped) folder, then rename the file to vxcustom.zip.
In Command Prompt:

cd \vxg4  
zip -r vxcustom.zip custom

Add a new classification in the system with the ID cad_custom_zip. Create a new document using Flow’s web interface and set its classification to cad_custom_zip. Attach the previously created vxcustom.zip file to the document.

Updating the Custom Zip

1. Reserve the previous vxcustom.zip using Flow’s web interface.

2. Unzip the file.

3. Add the new file to the unzipped custom folder.

4. Compress the custom folder in the same way as in the creation process.

5. Upload the new vxcustom.zip using Flow’s web interface.